Guns don’t kill people, people do. Computers don’t throw out crap, people do. Spreadsheets don’t truly measure success, people do. Bill posters don’t grab peoples attention, people do. Marketing doesn’t sell more, people do. Products don’t sell themselves, people do. Systems don’t get more out of people, people do. Connections don’t happen on their own, people initiate and develop them. Relationships don’t happen all by their self, people make them happen!

People make bad decisions, they make great decisions. People miff and they motivate. It’s all about people, its all about being social, its all about respect, its all about true connections. Always has been, always will be. Blaming the system is a naive, unintelligent way to go. The way we do things now in business and the communities we live in was created by people, is endorsed through behaviour by people and continues because of people.

We know the system is broken, we know it needs replacing, we know it needs to change but we just can’t bring ourselves to do it, not the masses anyway. We are so conditioned and scared. Well the more scared you are of something, the more you should embrace it. Otherwise, you are perhaps just leading an existence!

Been listening to Sting’s “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” on repeat recently, coupled with reading Douglas Rushkoff’s latest offering “Life Inc.” Faith is ‘reliance, trust, belief in, loyalty, sincerity.’ A definition according to The Oxford Dictionary.

Beginning to believe we have lost faith in each other so we have been buying from brands instead. In fact, perhaps we have allowed brands to define us rather than the feelings and values we hold true to each other. This is why business became transaction and to some extent de humanised, especially in corporate organisations. That’s why small business will have a future advantage. Its still comfortable with having a trusting relationship!

Lose faith in governments, the media, professions, brands, products, religion, all replaceable. When we lose faith in each other, our connections and our intentions are questioned and we decide not to trust, then we are in trouble. These are not replaceable. When we lose faith in relationships, whatever their dynamic, what have we got left?

A level playing field| People rather than products| Gifts| Air of excitement| Nervous trepidation| Unorthodox thinking| Too much coffee| Not enough change| Screen time| Insomnia stimulating inspiration| Inert organisations| Flair| Straight jacket actions| Google| Creative remixing| Bags of ideas| Little impact| Trouble at the mill| Going slow fast| The miracles of innovation| The stupidity of arrogance| Making noise quietly| Fields of turnips| The lack of grace| Twitter| Inconvenient trouble| Broken promises| Plaster solutions| Launch and learn| Perfection is subjective| Ecosystems| Absurdity of naivety| The shape of business| Exploitation| The futility of resistance| Connection not networking| The significance of difference| Facebook| False profits| Fragile trust| Community not brand| A mass of individuals| So its all about intent| Linkedin| The same thing on repeat| Profit rather than being human| Initiating history| Art| The abundance of the phony| Vulnerability| Foursquare| Deep down feeling it more| Ironic expression of indviduality| Frozen relationships| Nudge advocacy| Non financial influence| The future of conversation|

Word provided by Scott Gould – www.scottgould.me

If you help, what I contribute will be better. Value, in the future for a lot of people, will be whether and how they participate in the businesses we run. They will be particularly motivated by group effort. Participation has almost become risk free because the cost of failure has dropped so we can mass innovate. The tools are there and the hierarchy removed to allow us to all to really take part.

Humans have always had a desire to make meaningful contributions. We lost that. Businesses deliberately organised themselves to control the participating. However, the case studies of Wikipedia and Linux have altered how close the horizon is. Participation is changing the way companies use resources and it’s bridged the gap between the amateur and professional. Amateurs are collecting data on behalf of wildlife trusts, we can transmit news items to the media, and astronomers are listening for other life forms for governments.

The passive consumer is evaporating. We want to participate in the generation of new products and services. We no longer want to just wait for it down the line to be delivered. Charles Leadbeater talks about “mass production to mass innovation.” He has missed a process or two out of the equation. It’s more like this:

Mass production – Mass participation – Mass collaboration – Mass innovation

It’s just a thought. As companies we have misunderstood that it’s the non-financial, intrinsic factors that motivate people like participation more than the financial ones. We are always talking about the difficulties of getting customers and employees to understand what we do and the advantages of our product. Perhaps we should take a leaf out of Benjamin Franklin’s thoughts “Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I might remember, involve me and I will understand.” Powerful stuff. Maybe participation gets rid of that communication problem we have been having?

We have no excuses anymore. All business can allow its customers and employees to participate. I’m not talking about amateurs doing brain surgery, not a great idea, I agree. But I am talking about using the social tools we have now to enable the impossible to be achieved. If we involve people in the process, they take ownership. From that they will easily become part of our community, which is where we need them to be in the future.

We need business communities surrounding our business as they will help us deal with the near chaos of rapid change. Having talented people no matter their involvement and role in the community will be important. I’ll talk specifically about this over the weeks to come and the war for talent.

Facilitating this community will take huge heaps of imagination, energy and unlearning. It can’t be controlled just guided. There will be some significant issues to overcome, not least how your business community will behave.

The people in your business community will only do something if they believe it is worth doing, if it intrinsically motivates them. Financial reward is not principally why they will be involved. It will be a desire to connect with likeminded people, learn, participate and be challenged. They really abhor control, power and hierarchy.

Once developed and approaching maturity, groups within your business community may act spontaneously and without your authorisation or the need for you to organise it. Look at www.lego.com new designs, new products and new animations all created initially as ideas without company interference.

Business community participants will need space and places to meet, discover, think and converse. This, of course, does not mean just physically, it may mean you creating a platform online to encourage this. Business communities once confident, will want to do their own thing. That is, they may not come up with what you had in mind and will be very clear when you have done something wrong. This means they will unnerve and miff you occasionally.

This is not about forming a cult. Often people in your community will be opinionated, diverse, outspoken and comfortable expressing themselves. How powerful is that, constant, unadulterated, true feedback, product development, creative thinking and participation.

If you get it right, your business community will know how to play. They know how to push the limits. Led positively, this means lots of ideas that are childlike but not childish. Be prepared for how much this business community will feel part of your brand and how committed and loyal you will feel to it.

All right we’ve talked about the amoeba like qualities of a business community and why we have to evolve from having a static, transactional based database to a space where people who love what you do interact with each other. Sometimes you’ll organise this, occasionally the community will organise themselves. BMW doesn’t organised the Mini Club rally’s that take place on sunny Summer afternoons!

What’s critical in this process and what binds your business community is its connections. The connections between your employees, their customers, suppliers, their customers customers, competitors and you! You’ll map this connection visually once a year (we’re working on a model at the moment.) This will show connection lines, participation lines, influencing lines, prospecting lines and information channels.

Once you’ve mapped it, you can start to influence it yourself. This is where the new marketing tactics have replaced direct mail, telesales and advertising. This is not about stakeholders, like an overladen plane, that really never took off. This is about the regular convening of groups of people, facilitated by you across cross-sections of your business community with common interests. We’ll call them hot groups an evolvement of Jean Lipman- Bluemen and Harold J Leavitt’s idea! Where WOM and viral really can take hold.

It will eventually develop into an eco-system that thrives on information and knowledge flow. It will mean your organisation unlearning and letting go of lots of stuff:

Control to facilitation
Marketing to business communities
Closed to open
Broadcast to social
Restriction to freedom
Management to leadership

I’ve seen this working with a few clients and organisations and its fascinating, powerful, enlightening and inspiring watching companies engage with their ‘database’ sorry ‘business community’ in a very, very different and dynamic way!

Okay I’m going to be writing a lot about business community over the next few months. After what seems like tons of research and development, I’ve developed a framework that takes us beyond marketing that centres on building a community through strong robust relationships with customers and employees. Its nothing new, lots of people are talking about it. My company is just one of the first to create a practical way of applying it that is just so very exciting.

It starts with the end in mind, a business having a productive, collaborative, engaging, inspiring community of people co-creating, innovating and participating in the growth of the company. This is two, multi way stuff at its most dynamic. Its truly powerful and generates principally three results; true customers, true employees and true profits.

What do I mean? Well a business community is what you define it as, what’s specific to your business. Its the hub that’s at the centre of your brand! And, okay, its a space where people who have a common interest meet, share ideas, connect with each other, build great relationships, find mutual benefit and create things that have greater value. The people involved in your business community will take your business places you never imagined.

It’s not your database, although thats where you begin. A database is too static and inert for today’s business environment. A database doesn’t allow you to connect customers to each other. It only shares information one way and, in fact, its just a list. Not terribly engaging is it? Life has changed, customers have changed and so have employees. Social media has overturned how we do business. Meeting peoples expectations is pivotal in thriving and moving from a passive relationship to a fully engaged, demanding yet valuable organic place where great business is done.

Our businesses now need to start the process of growing, facilitating, encouraging and taking part in a business community that flocks to our brands. Its different from a database, it will grow, it will subtract, it will change dimensions, it will have different kinds of influencers, different connectors. It will have power struggles, it will innovate, it will co-create. It will shape your business and you will shape it. It will change everyday. You’ll measure it, you’ll monitor it but you will never rule it.

Gone are the days of sending newsletters out each month, some direct mail, tweeting and blogging. Building a business community goes much further than that. Its got lots of activity, heavy weight influencers, strong connectors, play, interaction and a hell a lot of conversation.

I’ll talk more over the coming weeks about how this will develop, some practical examples and, if you’re interested in your company taking part, get in touch. We’ve been testing for a while but we’re interested in developing this further with local company’s.

The world of work has changed dramatically in the last 18 months. Things we did in times of excess will be redundant. Expect sabbaticals to reinvent themselves. In the future these won’t be self indulgent trips to far flung places in the world for a couple of months.

Talented people will still get sabbaticals, but instead they’ll be thrown into a three month project with a supplier, customer, competitor, university or some other collaborative event. Their job to change things, shift the pace, find something interesting, learn and unlearn!

The second word from the forthcoming eBook “Hang On.”

It’s about taking the conversation beyond price. Conversation is no longer a distraction at work, it is central to its existence and a leader’s job now is to start those conversations and invite people to take part. Conversation initiates new rules, new ways of engaging. They spring up everywhere. We can’t stop someone from being part of the conversation. Our people are talking to customers, our customers are talking to US and most importantly, our customers SHOULD be talking to each other. We can’t beat them so we’ had better find a way of joining them.

David Weinberger in the book ‘The Cluetrain Manifesto’ states “We treasure our conversations most of all because they are ours, the way marketing speak never was.” The conversations we are having right now are so important. They can spread ideas, solve problems, gain agreement, build trust, remove barriers, encourage laughter and promote enjoyment. In the future, the conversations people are having in and around companies will be the essence of success. That means allowing it, encouraging it and facilitating it.

Most managers are terrible at conversation, they are too busy directing, making decisions, controlling budgets and keeping order. If you have ever walked onto the proverbial shop floor and killed the conversation you know what I mean!

Conversations are intimate, they are free, and they are open. They flourish when there is trust and a common commitment. Conversation is equal, it’s diverse, it generates the unexpected, and it’s participative and informal. They are actually quite liberating whilst at the same time conversation gives people a voice.

Conversations though do take control and power away from us control freaks and puts it right back where it precisely belongs with our customers, our community and our people. Charlene Li succinctly puts it this way “Campaigns begin and end, but conversations go on forever.” It’s interesting to sit down for a few moments and reflect on what conversations we are having right now……

There is an abundance of information on the web about social media that could take a lifetime to read and be all consuming. For some of us it is! However, there is a scarcity at the moment to how to weave this into an integrated marketing campaign.

Some would have us believe that its the only way forward and its the only thing you need to reach new and existing customers. Thats far too one dimensional and we’ll all fall into the trap of traditional marketing if we take that road.

As Olivier Blanchard said at www.wearelikeminds.com in February “Your business doesn’t plug into social media, social media plugs into your business.” He is right. It’s not an attachment, neither is it the only solution. We must not miss the opportunity to really get to the route cause of why we embark on social media campaigns. We can’t also ignore that its just as important to be gregarious offline as well as online.

Before embarking on any social media activity, we all need to go back to the beginning and think about how it is going to fundamentally change, for the better, the relationships we have with customers and employees. The fact is that social media is creating new vulnerabilities and opportunities for business. That can’t be ignored. There are some big questions to ask before setting a blog up such as; how will social media define what is being delivered to the customer.

We have to remember that, even now, most of our customers and users of social media read content but don’t necessarily post it. What that means, for now, is that social media is in a state of mass consumption, not mass creation. We have a long way to go to create meaningful experiences and that, in essence, is our first task!